


Both Here and There

by kerithwyn



Series: Quantum Entanglements [12]
Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-28
Updated: 2011-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:19:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerithwyn/pseuds/kerithwyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Olivia thinks about one Lincoln and encounters another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Both Here and There

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: "Neither Here Nor There", altered for my own nefarious purpose. Includes considerable dialogue from that episode.

Days go by and it becomes clear that the bridge isn't going to spontaneously vanish, nor will the machine, and it's safe enough to leave on its own. Protocols are put in place, security and decontamination both (Olivia remembers the diseases that plague the other world, and no one wants to risk a variant smallpox or cholera bug crossing over), and the respective parties return to their own worlds and their own ongoing concerns.

They do trade Fringe case files, as Olivia had suggested. The other side's lookers start weeding through the data, continuing to build a catalog of similarities and differences that might provide clues about the environmental degradation and the machine itself. The former, at least, seems to have slowed to its previous level in both worlds--worse on the other side, of course, but the Fringe teams there have the advanced expertise to keep things relatively stable.

It's...odd, to go back to the Harvard lab knowing that there's a portal to the other universe just sitting there in New York, but both sides quickly agreed to limit crossovers to essential operations only. Keeping the two Dr. Bishops separated is necessary for their continued effectiveness, and despite their truce, Olivia is just as happy not to have to deal with Liv on a constant basis.

And the distance keeps her from being in the same room as Lincoln, who--dammit, despite her resolution, despite her surety about Lincoln's feelings for Liv, she can't stop thinking about him.

Brooding about it isn't helping, so for once she decides to solicit an outside perspective. Astrid seems surprised by the invitation for a night out, but agrees readily. After making sure Agent Tim (he has a last name, but Olivia doesn't bother to recall it among the blur of all Walter's other keepers over the years) has Walter firmly tucked in for the night, they find a quiet restaurant and a couple of drinks in, Olivia broaches the subject.

She'd previously confessed to what happened between her and the other Fringe team in the other universe, after a long case and too many whiskeys. Astrid had been shocked, then intrigued. And now Astrid's met him, so Olivia invites her opinion.

"Lincoln? Oh, he's hot. Other-me thinks so, too." Astrid grins to Olivia's startled look. "She's autistic, not blind." She tilts her head in a familiar motion and looks thoughtful. "Though I'm not sure 'autistic' is the right word. It's more like Aspergers, but I think there's some exterior modification going on there too. But! We're here to talk about Lincoln."

"I don't...even know that there's anything to talk about." Olivia fiddles with her glass, pushes food around her plate with a fork. She's never had much appetite to begin with and the current uncertainties aren't helping. "It's ridiculous. He thought I was Liv, back then. It's not like...it's not like he even knows *me* at all."

"Hmm." The look on Astrid's face is a study in hesitation and conflicting impulses, but Olivia waits her out until she finally says, "I kind of think he does."

That's the end of her appetite altogether and Olivia puts the fork down with a tiny clink as it rings against the side of her plate. "*We're not the same.*"

"I know you don't want to hear this...but you're not *so* different." Astrid holds up a hand, her expression pleading for patience, and despite the urge to leave Olivia feels that Astrid has earned her say. "I know, I know. But she was able to take your place here without brainwashing, and I didn't...see the change. I'm still so sorry about that."

Olivia shakes her head, automatically denying Astrid's guilt, like she had when this came up before. "She had files, she had--

"I know you, or should have. But the point is--she was able to fool us for two months, and a lot of that was just Walter and I seeing what we were used to, with you. I'm *not* saying you're interchangeable. I'm just saying, if he's in love with one Olivia Dunham...I don't see why he couldn't fall for another one."

Astrid sits back, chin up like she's expecting a rebuke. But the truth is Olivia has never known Astrid to be wrong where her intuition is concerned, and her logic is...appealing. "Even if he might be interested...."

"Olivia. He is. I watched him circling you while we were in the bridge room, and that was not a man trying to keep away from someone he despised. That was a man trying to keep himself from licking you like the icing off a chocolate cake and dammit, I want dessert." Astrid flags down the waiter, efficiently having Olivia's dinner bundled up to go and ordering the most decadent thing off the dessert menu while Olivia fights down her blush. "You're helping me eat that, by the way."

"Astrid!" she sputters belatedly, but even she can tell the protest is weak. "I-- look, even if you're right, what am I supposed to do? Come up with a pretext and-- and jump him?"

Astrid nods without hesitation. "I think you should."

It was a ridiculous suggestion and now Astrid is just being absurd for the sake of argument. "But--"

"You don't allow yourself very much, Olivia. Life is short." Astrid shrugs a little and grins. "Cliché but true. Our lives, especially. "

Olivia is silent for a moment, chewing that over. "I thought you were supposed to be the sensible one."

"I'm the one on the side of not letting you explode out of sheer sexual frustration." Astrid usually came off so calm, so composed, sometimes she surprised Olivia with her more...earthy side. But then, Astrid also knew the locations of all the underground clubs in Boston.

"And when the bridge closes and I never see him again?"

"I'm still on the 'better to have loved' side. Even if I'm the one picking up the pieces. It's a cross I'm willing to bear." Astrid's smile is gentle, understanding. "Just think about it."

She does, but the thoughts are futile when there's zero probability that Olivia is going to actually make a...a booty call to an alternate universe. Part of her thinks it's probably a good thing, a healthy thing, that she's having these feelings again, considering she's been so closed off since John died. The rest of her is just frustrated and distracted and God help her, it's almost a relief when a new case comes in.

They receive a call about a murdered FBI agent with translucent skin, the description shockingly reminiscent of what had happened to John, and she and Astrid hurry over to the crime scene.

The case similarity is one thing. But standing there in anguish over the loss of his partner is Lincoln Lee, this world's Lincoln Lee, and it was probably inevitable that he'd be dragged into their world sooner or later. This is the way the universe works, that Olivia would be thinking about one Lincoln and the other appears. Walter's beloved quantum entanglement theory, in action.

The first time this Lincoln had met "her," Bell had just hijacked her consciousness. Olivia had read the case file on the woman who couldn't die to catch up after the fact. Astrid had taken on the responsibility for shepherding Agent Lee on that case while Bell and Walter remained in the lab, working on ways to transfer his consciousness out of Olivia's body. Lee acquitted himself well, Astrid reported, adapting to the strangeness of Fringe Division with relative grace.

Lincoln had been the one to suggest that Dana Gray wanted to use Brian Scott's bomb to kill herself along with a group of people. He'd been right, Astrid reported soberly. But it took them a little too long to catch up to her, and the bomb on the train went off as Brian had scheduled. They'd discovered Dana's remains, along with those of all the other victims. She'd found her death; whether she was with her family again, no one could say. Astrid, in an uncharacteristic moment of bitterness, added that she'd hoped Dana's afterlife was full of visions of all the people she'd allowed to die along with her.

Astrid also noted that Agent Lee had expressed an interest in Fringe Division, but Olivia figures this is the last way he'd have wanted to be reintroduced. She carefully puts all her inappropriate thoughts about his alternate aside and approaches him, wearing her very best sympathetic face.

"Agent Lee, I'm..."

"Agent Dunham. I remember. I guess I shouldn't be surprised you'd be called in on this one." His tone is flat, affectless; the result of shock, Olivia knows, his partner having been killed and he powerless to help. She remembers what that was like, far too keenly.

"Yes. I'm very sorry," she says as gently as she can, "but I need to ask you some questions about what happened."

"Get first impressions before they're lost to memory decay. Protocol. Sure." He looks over at her, eyes blue and watery behind his glasses. "But make it fast. I've got to-- I have to tell Jules, my God, his *kids*...."

She thinks, incongruously, how grateful she is that he's nothing like the other Lincoln, except in how much he obviously cares for the people in his life. But as a fellow agent he deserves her best effort, so she presses forward. "The person who attacked your partner, can you describe him?"

Lincoln-- *Lee,* she thinks, to keep them separate--takes a deep breath, shaking his head. "When I first got there, he was kneeling over Robert. I couldn't tell what he was doing, but his skin was... translucent. It's like what you see on Robert's face, but more of it."

Just like John. "And when he was kneeling over Agent Danzig, did you see anything in his hands like a device or anything that could have done this?"

"No, I didn't see anything. I've requested a Field Office M.E. ...but now that you're here, he's never going to see the body, is he?" Lee's gaze is penetrating, assessing even in his grief.

"No." For his double's sake, and his own, she owes him the truth. "We'll take him to Walter's lab. If anyone can find answers...."

Lee's glance turns sharp. "Have you seen the suspect before? Do you know who he is?"

There's only so much she can say here, and since he's already been to the lab.... "Not exactly, but we've seen something like this before. You...can come along, if you'd like. Your clearance still holds."

"Try and stop me," he says, and maybe he's not so different from his counterpart, after all.

Astrid approaches, with some diffidence. "Agent Lee? I'm...so sorry to see you again under these circumstances." To Olivia she adds, "I'm done here. The body-- he's ready for transport."

Lee nods her way, distracted. "Agent Farnsworth. I hope...I hope you don't mind me tagging along again."

"Oh, no! Not at all," Astrid says, flustered, and Olivia wonders briefly what other connection they might have made during that first case. "And it's Astrid, please."

Lee looks off into the distance, his distress evident. "I-- need to make a stop, be there when they notify Robert's family. I'll catch up with you at Harvard?"

"Of course," Astrid says before Olivia can reply. After he leaves, Astrid leans over and murmurs, "You okay with this? With him?"

"It's not an issue," she says, and thankfully, it's honestly not. Whatever fascination she has for the other Lincoln, it's not translating over to the one on this side. He's certainly attractive enough, but she's not having the same visceral reaction to his presence and that, at least, is a small mercy. "Let's see what we can find out before he comes looking for answers."

They return to the lab and start acquainting themselves with Robert Danzig and the case he and Lee were tracking. There don't seem to be any clues in the files, but that's as far as they get when Lee arrives and is accosted by Walter before either Olivia or Astrid can step in. A few moments later he's seen a dead bird fly and taken in the weirdness, as Astrid had indicated, without freaking out. It's a good sign.

There's a call about another body, and Lee invites himself to ride with them; again, at this point, there's really no reason not to have him along. Olivia should never have been allowed to investigate John's death, but Fringe Division makes its own rules and she figures she owes Lee the same courtesy for his partner's sake.

Astrid goes to deal with the body while Olivia and Lee confer about the new incidence. There's not much information, but she catches Lee looking at her oddly. It doesn't take much to figure out why.

"You're-- different," he says, "from when we met before. Your voice, your manner."

"I wasn't myself." Olivia pauses, smiles wryly. "More literally than I can explain right now." She can only hope Bell hadn't said anything too appalling or damaging.

He blinks at her, clearly choosing to take her non-explanation at face value. "Fringe Division," he mutters, like that covers everything, and looks around again at the scene. "One of these things is not like the other."

He's right, and the picture that young Olivia (the older Olivia, by this point, has stopped believing in coincidences altogether) captured on her phone provides valuable data. Once they're done at the scene, Olivia takes Lee to the temporary morgue, meeting Broyles there.

He's courteous and professional and already seems to be assessing Lee for recruitment into Fringe Division. "Agent Lee. I'm very sorry for your loss. I'll let your superiors know you'll be working with us for the duration."

"Thank you, sir," Lee manages, and then is struck, horrified, by the sight of all the other translucent corpses. When Broyles admits that they're out of leads and looking at all possibilities, Lee passes on the fact of Robert's Crohn's disease and his medication and adds,

"We were partners for five years. He was like family. Something I never thought I'd find. He believed that everything happened for a reason." Olivia recognizes a eulogy when she hears it and keeps her silence as he says with considerable heat, "I'm having a hard time believing that there's a reason for this."

He might not even hear her now, but one day her words might give him some solace. "There usually is a reason. Not a good one, not one you want to hear, but we've found that nearly every case has at least some kind of answer."

He's silent for a moment, and it turns out he did hear after all. "Then I'm in until we find it."

So he is, heading back to the lab with them in time to witness Walter's latest freak out. This time he's hiding in the submersion tank from a man he saw in his mirror. It's not the most alarming hallucination Walter's ever had and Olivia and Astrid get him calmed down in relatively short order. She explains to Lee a little about Walter--more would take days--and again, he's willing to take her at her word.

And his comment about the iron pills led Walter to a working hypothesis that they're dealing with a kind of blood-metal vampire, so at least that's a place to start identifying potential victims.

But Lee balks--finally, and Olivia has to admit she's a little surprised it's taken this long, when she remembers her own first experiences with Fringe cases--when he becomes aware that the bodies won't be returned to their families. She agrees that it's not fair, it's not just, but they've already had too many Fringe cases dance on the edge of public consciousness to risk knowledge about these bodies going public. The vortexes in New York had been hard enough to explain without benefit of the truth.

Still. His pain is immediate and obvious, and Olivia resolves to find a solution, if she can.

Even in his grief, Lee picks up on the commonality of the victims' locations and they're off again, on a stakeout in hope of flushing their prey. And it's probably because he's in such pain, and the fact that Olivia is still wrestling with her feelings about his alternate, that she opens up about John. The similarity between the two cases is almost eerie, and she feels she could almost be warning her younger self about the hazards to come.

The target's spotted, and the rest is a blur of adrenaline and action; she chases the suspect into a warehouse and ends up having to shoot, while Lee confronts and takes down an unsuspected second perp. It's a clean ending, as much as Fringe cases ever have.

When Lee turns up at the lab again he almost feels familiar enough to tease, but his face is somber. "I wanted to thank you for releasing Robert's body. I know you must have pulled some...significant strings. Why would you do that for me?"

It's both heartbreaking and telling that he takes the gesture so much to heart. "I know you haven't found the answers you were looking for yet, but I hope that it brings a kind of closure, a closure that he deserves. Because of what he meant to you."

He nods, and it's a relief to them both when Walter interrupts with the discovery of an embedded device in the bodies that looks all too familiar. Another kind of shapeshifter, he postulates, and with Lee looking on with confusion Olivia and Astrid and Walter begin a furious debate about the origin of the suspect and his tech.

Eventually, with Broyles' blessing, Olivia takes Agent Lee to Liberty Island and the bridge room. He submits to the security procedures with good grace, and Olivia takes the opportunity to warn him that any answers found here only lead to more questions. But he seems willing to accept that, so they take the final step onto the bridge.

And she'd-- dammit, yes, she'd been hoping that it'd be Lincoln who would greet them, both so she could see him again and so she could enjoy the spectacle of two alternates meeting without reason for innate antagonism.

But no, of course it's Liv, snarky and smirky as ever. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Lee do a double-take as he registers Olivia's mirror twin; Liv is remarkably poker faced in return, but Olivia is pretty sure that video of this meeting is going to be plastered all over the alternate division's walls.

Olivia passes over the device, explaining about the similarity to the other shapeshifters, and Liv promises to look into it. She glances at Lee again, seems about to comment, but apparently thinks better of it and saunters back to her doorway.

Olivia looks over at Lee, expecting a barrage of questions, but he's too busy being entranced by the sight of a zeppelin passing overhead on the other side. There's a long discussion ahead, considering that getting him up to speed will involve two universes' worth of history. But for now Olivia is content to let him have the wonder of the moment, a glimpse into a fantastic spectacle that she never had the opportunity to appreciate without conflict, and even finds herself envying him a little. She's going to enjoy working with him, she thinks, and Lee might bring a perspective to the team they've all been missing.

On second thought, it's probably better if Astrid handles the debrief. Olivia isn't...unbiased, and Lee deserves to have the account of their dealings with the other universe related without prejudice. And judging by the looks Astrid was sneaking at Lee throughout the case, it's possible that she finds him just as appealing as his alternate.

If Astrid wants to play yenta, it's only fair that Olivia gets to play too.

***

CODA: Over There

"...should've seen him!" Liv is crowing. "All buttoned up, and those *glasses*...!"

Lincoln can't help but see him, since Liv charmed someone into setting the other Lincoln's image as the background picture on all of their pads. It's... *he's* disconcerting, and Lincoln begins to understand the fundamental uneasiness the two Olivias have with each other.

Charlie calls over from his desk, where his feet are up and his grin won't quit. "Hey boss, is that your real hair?"

Even Farnsworth gave him a sideways glance today. Lincoln can understand the fascination; he can't stop looking at the picture, at the video from the bridge room. He can almost see himself standing there in the guise of this him-who-isn't, especially if he'd done as his father wanted and pursued a law degree. But other-Lincoln is an FBI agent, essentially living the parallel to Lincoln's own career choices sans Fringe events, and that's sort of...comforting, in a way. It seems this is where he was meant to be, in any universe.

But staring at the video like everyone expects him to also gives him an eyeful of Olivia standing next to his alternate. She's perfectly composed, giving nothing away except for a hint of the friction between her and Liv. Lincoln wonders if the universe really is trying to tell him something: there is Lincoln Lee, standing next to Olivia Dunham like he doesn't belong anywhere but at her side.

Ridiculous. *Distracting.* But the image he keeps on his pad is the one with her picture, and before too long he finds himself looking for an excuse to...consult.

As it turns out, he doesn't need the excuse.

**Author's Note:**

> *crossing fingers* that "One Night in October" doesn't joss me too badly on the last line; the previews give me hope!
> 
> Re the revised version of "Stowaway", and not getting to the train on time: not in any way a comment on Astrid's competence, which is mighty, but acknowledgement that Peter's quickness in making connections is irreplaceable.
> 
> P.S.: thank you, dearest Show, for making it so *easy* to integrate your canon into my version! *beams* Not sure if I'll be keeping up on a 1:1 basis--seems unlikely--but this one fell out so smoothly it couldn't be helped.


End file.
